This is just a rough idea so feel free to weigh in. 


I figure a way to make pursuing diplomacy over pure conquest more interesting would be to implement diplomatic events. Off the top of my head it could be a natural disaster of some kind, or a virus rampaging through one or more empires. In this scenario that would leave those empires vulnerable and some event choices would pop up for other empires depending on their standing with the unfortunate ones affected (Or maybe it's the same choices for all empires, I haven't decided yet). Choices could include sending help in the case of a disaster or trying to stop the spread of the virus if ...well if it's a virus. Maybe a choice could be choosing this time to attack or sabotage efforts to recover. You could also just ignore the event and hope that if it's a virus it won't spread to your empire.


All of the choices would have a diplomatic impact of some kind on top of whatever the event was that happened to an empire/empires. The whole point being to make diplomacy interesting. It's not about the events as such, because we already have those. It's about interacting with the other empires so they're not just dots on the map.


And it doesn't have to be a negative event, I just can't think of any positive ones right now. But going back to the virus, I'm thinking an event like that could be about keeping it from spreading to neighboring settlements/empires and helping each other make a cure faster (I say faster because this thing obviously isn't going to wipe everyone out. It's gotta be temporary). Sabotage is a good one because it requires subterfuge. You can imagine yourself how that might work. It wouldn't cause a diplomatic penalty for the empire doing the sabotaging because nobody would know. Only that they'd been sabotaged.


Anyway, let me know what you think. If it's dumb, tell me it's dumb. 


Also tell me if someone already has an idea like this. I looked around a bit and didn't see this exact idea, but if someone already thought of this I'll just remove this.